The program executive office for integrated warfare systems is looking toward a flag-level executive committee meeting set for this spring that will appraise the office's progress in defining for fleet operators, acquisition commands, and the defense industry a vision of open architecture for the Navy's combat-systems computing.
The planned meeting will follow a similar session last year, chaired by Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development, and Acquisition John Young and attended by some 30 flag officers, that resolved that the surface, undersea, and aviation communities would embark on a long-term effort to transform Navy tactical computing systems by shifting them from proprietary, difficult-to-upgrade, hardware-based architectures to a single open architecture based on commercial standards.
The surface warfare community is leading the open-architecture initiative. The effort now is moving toward implementation in 2008 (for surface combatants, carriers, and big-deck amphibious ships) of a computing environment based on commercial standards in which system-functional applications are independent of computer hardware.
The surface warriors are tackling probably the toughest challenge in the shift to open architecture: the complex mix of noninteroperable shipboard combat systems, including the Aegis system on board Ticonderoga (CG-47)-class cruisers and Arleigh Burke (DDG-51)-class destroyers, a new ship self-defense system being fielded for carriers and big-deck amphibs, and a mix of other less-capable proprietary systems for second-line combatants.
Navy Captain Tom Strei, director for architectures and technology for the integrated warfare systems program executive office, says the need for open architecture is driven both by the fleet's need to operate in network-centric combat environments and the evolution of affordable commercial processing and telecommunications technologies built to accepted standards that, if adopted by the Navy, will permit new levels of systems integration for network-centric operations.
The open-architecture effort began with the Navy's recognition that, because systems such as Aegis were developed with Navy proprietary computing hardware based on the ubiquitous "UYK" shipboard computer family and unique hardwarespecific software, upgrading them for new missions had become unaffordable and ineffective. The UYK-based systems provide the fail-safe performance required for time-critical combat systems. Strei points out, however, that commercially developed hardware and software presently available can, when properly engineered, provide the same level of performance.
In addition, because the surface ship programs traditionally developed every element of their systems independently, combat systems for surface combatants, carriers, and amphibs (all of which execute many of the same systems functions) are not interoperable.
Strei says the open-architecture approach derives in part from ideas that emerged from the Defense Department's opensystems joint task force, which recognized that software application programs designed to be loosely coupled and "portable" among systems and based on the use of commercial standards free users from being locked into closed proprietary designs.
"We've taken that a step further," Strei says. It is possible, he says, to build the precepts of open architecture into any system. Even so, surface warfare programs continue independently to build separate systems to carry out the same functions, such as combat identification and track formation.
"Today's technology allows you to build certain functionality, on time, and keep it dynamically updated," says Strei. "Instead of every program working on the same functionality, it's now possible to have programs focus on a single functional area that can be shared with others."
The intent of open architecture, he says, is to "level the playing field" by defining a common, standards-based computing environment. "We are dictating which commercially available standards that Navy weapon systems programs should use to develop their products."
The open-architecture effort will be implemented in five conceptual categories. The first, introducing hardware adapters, already is under way in Aegis baseline 6 phase 3 and baseline 7 phase 1, which originally started the evolution of Aegis to commercial hardware. Category two, also showing up in Aegis and in the ship self-defense system programs, incorporates open-architecture software interfaces, or middleware. Category three, to be achieved by 2008, requires compliance with accepted commercial standards. The fourth category identifies common functions, and the fifth represents a full, open, total-ship computing environment, envisioned for the DD(X) land-attack destroyer and other future ships.